GCI Makes Transformational Acquisition with Blue Chip

Managed Technology Services Provider GCI, today announces its fifth and largest transaction within the last 18 months with the acquisition of highly regarded Managed IT Services company Blue Chip: a 20-year pacesetter delivering end-to-end fully managed IT services to large SMEs, enterprises and public sector organisations.

This makes GCI one of the largest privately owned Managed Service Providers in the UK with 500 staff, turnover approaching £100m and an impressive technical capability underpinned by multiple vendor certifications, including 10 Microsoft Gold accreditations.

Commenting on the acquisition, GCI’s CEO Adrian Thirkill stated: “Our latest acquisition is another great name and is right up there with earlier acquisitions including Outsourcery and Freedom which have already added immeasurably to our capability. It’s a really simple story: we are continuing our commitment to finesse the shape and direction of GCI and align our services
and solutions with our customers’ requirements across all sectors in large SME, mid-tier enterprise, strategic partners and UK Government. Digital transformation is here to stay and it naturally flows through to digital ‘business as usual’. Helping our customers to shape, plan and then deliver their digital journey is what GCI is all about, and Blue Chip is another keystone within it. Digital business life is becoming all about our customers’ business outcomes and our role in supporting that.”

When it comes to the Channel being ‘digitally aware’ Thirkill says “I would say only 5% – 10% of the Channel is currently in that category. That will get bigger and some companies will become dinosaurs and disappear, others will do very well and grow out of it. The 5% could be a large amount of spend because they will do very well.”

“If Channel Partners are looking for a couple of broadband circuits or something similar we aren’t that sort of company anymore. we are changing the structure of how we address the Channel, a lot more of it will be online and through digital services and will allow IT departments to spend their time on innovation rather than BAU.”

Richard Cook, MD at Blue Chip commented: “It’s a reasonably rare thing for two technology organisations with around 20 years’ experience each to come together in complete aligned agreement. Adrian is spot on: the journey to an integrated digital business is indeed complex. The technology interdependencies are challenging and the solutions are many and varied. But the task is made easier if you have a trusted guiding hand. The personal touch ‘technical support pod’ concept we have finessed over 20 years and our well-invested processes and systems provides just that: an assurance to our customers that we will ‘live and breathe’ their world and always put their best interests first. This mindset is the bedrock that underpins our customer partnerships and is a great cultural fit too with GCI. I look forward to joining the GCI board to further accelerate
this customer value.”

Richard Cook continues: “Blue Chip enables in-house IT staff to focus on front-end business improvement priorities while we monitor their digital heartbeat and take care of the routine stuff, that includes patching, backups, device management and much more. But that’s only part of it.

The big plus point is that we are there to help with strategic shaping providing solid advice backed by the combined learning of 40,000 deployments, a huge technical resource, and skills that span virtually every leading technology vendor and all environments: on-premise, private cloud, public cloud, hybrid. That’s a great mix for our customers which include some of the most prestigious names in the UK.”